PKD Round 3, This House believes, when in conflict, free markets should be valued above protectionism

This round took an interesting tack. Gov took the more traditional approach to the resolution, saying the only thing it asked the debaters to do was compare and contrast the two ideas, with Opp not being allowed to claim “do both”. Bayley and Raffi offered a counter-definition, saying that “in conflict” meant in times of actual strife, whether it be economic crisis, war, etc. The two interpretations aren’t as different as one might expect. The examples they cite are really the only times when we’re forced into an actual “choose one” type of decision. They said the competitors were pretty upset (Raffi said, “If we had those arguments ran against us, we would have been pissed”), but the judge has a CEDA background and didn’t take offense to the idea or anything. They were somewhat unsure of the overall result.

Alex and Kevin, Opp

Being a liberal economics major, I just lost it when we got the resolution. I was made to debate this resolution. Our opponents’ case was based around the basic virtues of capitalism, citing things like increased choice and economic growth. We responded by saying that no protectionism allows for hyper poverty, negative externalities like pollution, and economic collapse in 2008. We also added that Gov never provided any examples where there’s any actual conflict with the ideas, and accordingly you never see any of there impacts in times where we can’t have both. Strangely, Opp defined the value as capitalism compared to our value of justice as equality of opportunity. We said their value has no inherent worth, which apparently they agreed with as they adopted our value in the final speech.